Continue Clipping from Yesterday

July 30, 2010.  Friday.

Situation:  Again, with Moi away, I have to wake up to the morning chores she usually does; but since I learned them the last time she was away, I’ve got them down to a routine, and I even derive a kind of pleasure from carrying them out so efficiently.  First thing, turn on the computer, then go pee while the start-up program is progressing toward the log-on icon; when I’m done peeing I go back to the computer, the icon is ready to be clicked, and I click it.  Then go downstairs, measure out coffee and pour in water, then fork out a wedge of Squeak’s canned cat food and microwave for 15 seconds…and so on.  Everything is carried out so there’s not a wasted movement, not a moment of standing or sitting around waiting.  I don’t know if I would want to do this everyday, but I enjoy it today.  I don’t know what time it is when I first awake; my alarm clock in my bedroom has completely broken, but it must be around 8:30 when Mway and I, after letting out the chickens, feeding them, and checking for eggs, head out onto the path.  I have to work tonight; I’m not sure yet if I’ll take Mway for a full walk this afternoon or not.

State of the Path:  I bring along the clippers again today.  I’m pleased to take in the advantages of my industry from yesterday: the main path opens up before me, about two feet wide, without me having to get my pants soaked from morning dew (though there doesn’t seem to be much dew on the plants this morning anyway).  I trim some weeds that I missed yesterday, cut down a giant ragweed that I previously decided to spare – why did I think to spare it, I wonder, because there’s not as much ragweed this year as in years past?  I look at one plant leaning into the path beneath the maple tree at the edge of the sumacs; I had spared this, but why? – the only thing I know is that it is not a goldenrod.  Then when I get down to where I had whacked down some goldenrod with the stick the other day, at the exiting juncture to the side path, I decide to clip my way through the goldenrod as far as my energy will allow.  Bend down, snip the stems to the right, then to the left, step forward.  Mway follows slowly behind me – and I wonder why?  does she think I’m snooping around for little animals to chase?  I proceed through the goldenrod, following the curve of the path, until I get to the stand of jewelweed, just before the big maple and the area of brambles.  I decide to stop here, and spare the jewelweed – why? because I feel sorry for it this year, so much of it having come up early in the year then dying off in the drought?  I turn around to head back to the main path.  I see the goldernrod swaying some ways away toward the old orchard, and I realize this is Mway, who finally ventured off on her own, indeed, to snoop out little animals.  I head down to the creek.  Yesterday I had noticed, and had forgotten to mention, that there’s not many ripe blackberries anymore; there’s a few clusters of new red ones, but it seems the black ones haven’t lasted for long this year.  I also had noticed that under the big locusts along the creek, the two multiflora bushes that engulfed the two trees at their bases are both dead – nothing left but their dead branches sticking up along the tree trunks.  Did they die because of the drought or because I’ve been cutting back their branches or simply because of old age?  Two honeysuckle bushes continue to thrive next to the multifloras, closer to the edge of bug land.  Through the red willows, I see that I did a pretty good job of clipping here, and I pass through the area quickly.  Also on the other side of the ridge, I did a good clipping job, although the main weeds here are grasses, hard to cut back, and on a wet, dewy morning I might still get wet.  Down at the creek, I again hear the sound of – did I say the other day, grasshoppers?  Seems to me this should be, and I should have said, the sound of cicadas.  It’s not crickets, not locusts.  I don’t think grasshoppers make a sound.  Probably the sound of cicadas.

State of the Creek:  The water in the rock bed between the pool under the tree stand and the pool under the black walnut is dried up.  Pools becoming disconnected again.  The piece of vinyl siding sits pretty much out of the water.

The Fetch:  Up at the clearing, I fully expect Mway to fetch the stick more times than I care to count.  But only one fetch again today.  Why?  She must know that I’m going to feed her when we get back to the house.  Maybe she thinks that spending a lot of time snooping along the path is equivalent to fetching: if she does the one, she doesn’t have to do the other, to earn her breakfast.  Back at the house, dish out her food.  Pour out coffee, look forward guiltily to first cigarette.  Didn’t see any grasshoppers in the clearing, or maybe just didn’t notice them.  In the back yard, the pool filter is whining away, louder than the sound of cicadas, like the sound of locusts, so loud I close the kitchen door so I don’t have to hear it.